La Grande Dictée

Get ready for your close up.

Just like the US has spelling bees and England has full-contact cheese rolling, France has la dictée, dictation contests where people transcribe oral passages and get graded for spelling, grammar, and proper verb conjugation. All of these are extremely tricky for those of us new to French. For example, in English, the verb "eat" is spelled and pronounced exactly the same in the sentences "I eat," "you eat," and "they eat." In French, the sentences would use mange, manges, and mangeant, respectively--spelled differently, but pronounced exactly the same. And that's just a basic word. So it heartens me a little to know that these skills are also difficult enough for native French speakers that they can be used to sort out les superieurs from les inferieurs.

Competitive dictées are very popular, often attracting thousands of participants and broadcast on television. Contests split into divisions for students in different grades (right up through college) and for adults who apparently don't have enough strict evaluation in their lives anymore.

The contest this year was held in the Champ de Mars, to tie in with the opening of the Olympic games 100 days hence. French novelist Agnès Martin-Lugand was reading some of the passages as we looked on from the sidelines, catching a few words here and there. Part of my limited success at comprehension came from seeing Madame Martin-Lugand's face on a jumbotron as she read, but also because she enunciated her words clearly, slowly, and repeated each phrase a second time. In that respect, it was like being in a different country altogether.

Madame Martin-Lugand intones across the Champ de Mars, 7th Arr.

She understands French, but only when spoken slowly, clearly and repeatedly.

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